It's market cap is $800B. Amazon and Microsoft are roughly $1T. Facebook is $600B.
We're not a bunch of rubes here, to have this many articles proposing sanctions and/or breakup of Google has all the fingerprints of coordinated action. It's less than a month after the US president saying he would sue them because he felt they didn't give conservative sources favorable enough index ranking.
This has a stink to it.
What exactly is Google supposed to do here? Are they to require a validated business license to update one's listing on Google Maps? Besides the non-trivial expense associated with that, it would act as a barrier to entry for smaller businesses that don't have one, and you can bet there'd be articles on here hating that too (just like there have been about the GMail API changes).
Amazon declared tomorrow "Prime Day" and a lot of workers are striking today and/or tomorrow.
Throwing shade at Google would be a good way to keep technical people from paying attention to the plights of workers.
But it could also just be a coincidence.
I heard about the problem with Google and locksmiths and was very careful the one time I locked my keys in my car without a backup a few years ago. I refused any locksmith that didn't quote an absolute price and found a local one that only charged $60.
It's not Prime Day, and there's bad press about Google. It's Prime Day, and there's still bad press about Google. Prime Day is over, and there will continue to be bad press about Google.
The word I'd go for isn't "coincidence." It's something more like Captain Obvious.
I'd guess many anti-corporate sentiments are rising, and there's just some overlap in scheduling
I noticed a similar thing about a year ago when Facebook was in the crosshairs.
Having said that. These companies are obvious monopolies prone to abuse their power.
TBH so does using market cap to dismiss criticism of Google
And yes, it was deserved for them as well.
It's almost certainly the case that Amazon is helping and urging people to post negative stories about other high profile competitors, Google included, right now. That's just how tech journalism works. Amazon is just much better at it than less successful attempts like the "scroogled" campaign.
This does not dismiss the bad things Google does. However, it does mean that it's a good week to remind people to boycott Amazon any way they can in addition to holding Google accountable.
[0]: Although that outcome was largely driven by collective action from employees and reports of some employee retaliation were public as a result of it.
What would you say makes it "almost certainly" about Amazon?
Don't you think it's better for both our mental health and the tone of HN if we not argue about this, and perhaps agree both companies do bad things and scheduled boycotts of both can be a good example of collective action?
Because they’ve been behaving badly for years and a number of people like me will upvote anything that gives them a pounding (of course only if I think it makes sense.)
A better question should probably (again IMO) be why they’ve gotten away so easily for so long.
> Amazon and Microsoft are roughly $1T. Facebook is $600B.
Facebook has taken a lot more beating. All very deserved IMO, in fact I think they deserve a fair bit more, but at least they got more than Google AFAIK, which is reasonable.
Microsoft has been beaten so much by sysadmins like me, governments etc, both for fun and for profit that I don’t think anything Google or Facebook has experienced yet really compares.
Amazons time hasn’t come yet I guess.
Microsoft's market cap is largely software/services, where fraud's largely going to impact Microsoft themselves. Bing Ads are likely peanuts compared to Google's offering.
I am not talking about HN's reaction, but the wider pattern of calls from high levels to investigate and break up Alphabet. It is functionally the same as AT&T and Time Warner - using the threat of antitrust and other powers of the FTC to get favorable treatment and harm adversaries. It is new and dangerous.
Keep in mind that this is a hunk of crap.